There should be more dancing at funerals. The thought struck me last month at Manchán Magan’s funeral in the church at Gonzaga College in Dublin, that while we do wonderful send-offs for people, Irish funerals are generally lacking in the dancing department. It would not have seemed as glaring an omission before Manchán’s ceremony, extraordinary as it was in so many ways, but when dancer and Manchan’s dear friend Michael Keegan-Dolan led the congregation in a dance that day it seemed so natural, so obvious, so essential. And as I wiggled my fingers and stamped my feet in the church for Manchán I thought to myself: we need more dancing at funerals.
I say this as a non-dancer. As the kind of person who has to be dragged up to dance floor at weddings, even her own. I make a plea here for more dancing at funerals even though I’m the kind of person who, having been dragged up to dance, only a few lines into the first verse of Dancing Queen or a CMAT banger, will find a way to subtly shimmy her way back to a nice comfy seat and watch the movers and shakers on the dance floor from a more comfortable distance. Dancing in public makes me feel uncomfortable. Self-conscious. I can’t let go. I fear my moves will be judged.
When Michael, of acclaimed Dingle-based dance theatre company Teach Damhsa, got up and announced he was going to lead us in a dance at Manchán’s funeral, my friend Gerry, aka Breadman Walking, noticed the wave of mortification and discomfort ripple through the congregation. I felt it deeply myself. But we all got up and got into the spirit of things, as Michael led us through an elemental-themed dance inspired by Manchán. We stamped our feet and waggled our fingers. We laughed and we cried.
I talked to Michael about it afterwards. Michael says, and he should know, that dancing is a way of manifesting buried feelings and emotions we might find otherwise difficult to process. Dancing churns things up, stirs the physical pot. In this way it helps with grief and grieving. It wasn’t easy for Michael to get up there, deep in his grief, to lead us in dance but it was healing and it seemed to shift something in all of us. We need more dancing at funerals.
I wore a wolf mask to a Halloween party recently. And, unusually for me, I danced a little. I hid behind the wolf mask and gently swayed to Barry McCormack, who was playing live in the basement of the party house. McCormack has a funny song called Tourist from his album Painting Devils about how he’s a reluctant traveller. “Why are we here?” he sang.
It was the kind of Halloween party where if you weren’t dressed or masked or face painted you looked a bit odd. I had a chat with Dracula and admired [Sid Vicious’s girlfriend] Nancy Spungen’s commitment to her costume – she had a knife sticking out of her stomach. I liked being invisible behind my wolf mask. I felt unselfconscious. Free. I was dancing like nobody was watching, just a random, swaying wolf.
The next day I went to Manchán’s month’s mind at the Hill of Uisneach. I spotted a lot of people from the Halloween party there, in different, more weather-resistant clothes. My friend Gerry gave out bread he’d made from Manchán’s sourdough starter and some of Manchán’s remains were spread by his wife Aisling Rogerson near a roaring fire on the hill at Ireland’s sacred centre. I was glad that Michael was there to lead us all in movement again. We chanted Manchán’s name in the rain, waved our fingers, waggled our umbrellas. It was comical and cosmic all at the same time.
Manchán’s legacy is there in his books, in his words, in his television programmes. But his legacy is also in the creative way he and his loved ones planned his departure from this world. We need more dancing at funerals. More Druids. More Cree elders. More acorns. “Why are you here?” Aisling asked the 2,500-strong month’s mind gathering, and what she meant was that something deep had drawn us to this place at this time, not just the celebration of an exceptionally special person. There was something else, she said, a curiosity in everyone who gathered there, that had to do with that spark of connection that has come alive in so many of us since Manchán’s death.
She read a short extract from his latest, as yet unpublished book in which he describes an “inner urging” in people that “it is time to delve deeper into who and what we are, and reassert our connection to our ancestors, to the land and to the spirits”. Then Aisling said, answering the question she’d asked earlier: “I think that’s why we’re here.”
The inner urging is real. And I want dancing at my funeral, which is hopefully a good while off yet. Specifically, I want Michael Keegan-Dolan to make up a dance and lead everyone, pink-cheeked and slightly mortified, in moving their bodies, stirring the emotional pot. My prediction is that Manchán’s funeral and his month’s mind are going to gently impact the way we do things, the way we mark departures, the way we grieve.
If anybody wants advice or inspiration for dancing at funerals, Michael says he’s delighted to help and if anyone has advice for him on this subject, he is all ears. There will be more dancing at Irish funerals in the months and years to come. Bring it on.
